6 ms·

If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same ou

If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same outcome, of course.

darpa_escapee 9y ago
I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.
- wyager 9y ago
  Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification. There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.
  - wodencafe 9y ago
    I find it very interesting that your comment was down-voted.
  - eloff 9y ago
    I also found this surprising. Cloudflare specifically always took the stance that it's not their place to censor the internet, which is why they permitted extremist/terrorist content[1] that people were pressuring them to remove. It amazes me that they kept that, but deleted the alt-right stuff. Now I think these alt-right websites are disgusting, but worse than ISIS? [1]https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubbishes_anonymous_claims_of_terrorist_support/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubb...
    - jorvi 9y ago
      ISIS is a bad example. Antifa however? CloudFlare (and domain registrars) should either exile the extremes on either side, or allow either side. The situation right now is stupendously lopsided.
      - orf 9y ago
        I don't see Antifa mowing down protesters in cars and spewing Nazi hate speech at Nazi rallies they organized though, so I'd say that's a false equivalency.
        wyager 9y ago
        That's because the media has insanely lopsided coverage of recent attacks. It's a miracle no one's died from antifa attacks yet. Look up Eric Clanton. I also encourage you to watch actual footage of events starting with the Milo protest in berkely; the stuff I've been seeing on my news feed has nothing to do with reality.
        orf 9y ago
        Lopsided or not, Antifa protesters have not driven a car into 'the other side' have they.
        jorvi 9y ago
        I haven't seen any Nazis completely ripping up a town like Antifa did to Hamburg, so yes, actually, Antifa is shit and we should be rid of them sooner rather than later.
        orf 9y ago
        Cool, but that's not what I asked was it. Also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/german-police-arrest-211-after-far-right-riot-in-leipzig https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/german-police-... Took me 2 seconds to find that. Your lack of knowledge isn't proof of something not existing. Where Antifa discharging firearms at peaceful protesters? Or was that the neo-nazis?
  - jawbone3 9y ago
    Right, there was nothing political at all about the supression of wikileaks and torrent sites, it was just legal proceedings...
    - wyager 9y ago
      Wikileaks hasn't been censored at all; they're even still present on Twitter (unlike any far-right-leaning personality). Wikileaks has been immorally persecuted in many ways, but direct censorship is not one of them.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Wikileaks is left-wing? I did not know this. The narrative, of late, has been that Assange is a fan of Trump and aided Putin's goal during the election.
      - throwaway575457 9y ago
        Wings have lost all meaning.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    I'm under the impression that the Daily Stormer was at least somewhat widely known. Is there a website of similar reach that, say, calls for a Communist revolution or sabotage of power plants in the name of environmentalism? I get my only news about US politics from HN, so I genuinely have no idea.
  - bsder 9y ago
    > Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? It wasn't the GOVERNMENT that did this. That's the only thing that freedom of speech laws give you freedom from. And, those sites weren't suppressed because they impacted politics; they were suppressed because they impacted profitability. It's almost like the right needs some sort of "neutrality" laws that guarantee that internet websites and internet traffic they need can't be restricted. I'm pretty far left in my politics, and I find the idea that these websites got kicked off quite worrying. However, I also find the centralization of internet services quite worrying. I'm still old school enough that I run my own servers for exactly this reason.
    - wyager 9y ago
      I agree. I did not claim this is the government's doing. I agree censorship of political content on private infrastructure is (and should be) legal; I also believe it's plainly immoral and should alarm people. I also believe that, given that the public DNS is government-controlled, it nominally belongs to the public and private entities like cloudflare should not be gatekeepers to it. Of course, the best solution is for everyone to switch to some sort of crypto-based truly public DNS system like Namecoin, but that's not happening for a while.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Communists don't advocate genocide as a matter of dogma.
- Myrmornis 9y ago
  There is nowadays a great deal of censorship from the left in America. For example, shutting down of talks like https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/richard-dawkins-deplatformed-at-a-book-talk-berkeley-for-abusive-speech-about-islam-on-twitter/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/richard-...
  - losteric 9y ago
    And there is plenty of opposition from "the left" itself against that kind of censorship
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Whereas there's no opposition from "the right" against the Nazis for examples?
      - losteric 9y ago
        Obviously most of the right is against Nazis, but the modern conservative faction seems to draw a much higher ratio of violence and fascist rhetoric than the left. When something happens, the media gives right-wing fascists the benefit of the doubt; "we don't know who he is", "he doesn't represent the movement", "he was scared", "he was attacked", "he's crazy", and once the proof is out they tend to draw false equivalencies with left. That doesn't happen as much on the left - it's stigmatized full stop, no excuses. CNN's clickbait news will drag it out
        coldtea 9y ago
        >When something happens, the media gives right-wing fascists the benefit of the doubt; "we don't know who he is", "he doesn't represent the movement", "he was scared", "he was attacked", "he's crazy", and once the proof is out they tend to draw false equivalencies with left. Does it though? Because I found the majority of the media except niche-oriented ones like FOX and Breibart do not fit that profile.
larvaetron 9y ago
I wouldn't classify "think of the children" as a right-wingers' club - Tipper Gore co-founded the PMRC.
- ktRolster 9y ago
  It works because people actually do care about kids. The hard part is figuring out what will help them.
- coldtea 9y ago
  I wouldn't classify Tipper Gore as left wing either. Whether Democrats are they are hardly left wing, and somebody who would found PMRC even less so...

If it's right-wingers, it'll be terrorism and "think of the children". If it's left-wingers, it'll be hate speech and "think of the women/minorities". Same outcome, of course.

darpa_escapee 9y ago

I've yet to see any proposals from the latter camp whereas I've seen dozens of pieces of legislation successfully passed and attempt to pass from the former.

wyager 9y ago
Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? This literally happened in the last week; domain registrars (the only gateway the public has to critical public DNS infrastructure) decided to voluntarily censor various far-right websites citing "hate speech" as their justification. There is, evidently, a fairly powerful and far-reaching population of left-leaning people who believe and are willing to act on the idea that the internet should be politically controlled. I've never heard of this being done successfully against, say, a communist website.
- wodencafe 9y ago
  I find it very interesting that your comment was down-voted.
- eloff 9y ago
  I also found this surprising. Cloudflare specifically always took the stance that it's not their place to censor the internet, which is why they permitted extremist/terrorist content[1] that people were pressuring them to remove. It amazes me that they kept that, but deleted the alt-right stuff. Now I think these alt-right websites are disgusting, but worse than ISIS? [1]https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubbishes_anonymous_claims_of_terrorist_support/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/18/cloudflare_ceo_rubb...
  - jorvi 9y ago
    ISIS is a bad example. Antifa however? CloudFlare (and domain registrars) should either exile the extremes on either side, or allow either side. The situation right now is stupendously lopsided.
    - orf 9y ago
      I don't see Antifa mowing down protesters in cars and spewing Nazi hate speech at Nazi rallies they organized though, so I'd say that's a false equivalency.
      - wyager 9y ago
        That's because the media has insanely lopsided coverage of recent attacks. It's a miracle no one's died from antifa attacks yet. Look up Eric Clanton. I also encourage you to watch actual footage of events starting with the Milo protest in berkely; the stuff I've been seeing on my news feed has nothing to do with reality.
        orf 9y ago
        Lopsided or not, Antifa protesters have not driven a car into 'the other side' have they.
        jorvi 9y ago
        I haven't seen any Nazis completely ripping up a town like Antifa did to Hamburg, so yes, actually, Antifa is shit and we should be rid of them sooner rather than later.
        orf 9y ago
        Cool, but that's not what I asked was it. Also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/german-police-arrest-211-after-far-right-riot-in-leipzig https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/german-police-... Took me 2 seconds to find that. Your lack of knowledge isn't proof of something not existing. Where Antifa discharging firearms at peaceful protesters? Or was that the neo-nazis?
- jawbone3 9y ago
  Right, there was nothing political at all about the supression of wikileaks and torrent sites, it was just legal proceedings...
  - wyager 9y ago
    Wikileaks hasn't been censored at all; they're even still present on Twitter (unlike any far-right-leaning personality). Wikileaks has been immorally persecuted in many ways, but direct censorship is not one of them.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Wikileaks is left-wing? I did not know this. The narrative, of late, has been that Assange is a fan of Trump and aided Putin's goal during the election.
    - throwaway575457 9y ago
      Wings have lost all meaning.
- yorwba 9y ago
  I'm under the impression that the Daily Stormer was at least somewhat widely known. Is there a website of similar reach that, say, calls for a Communist revolution or sabotage of power plants in the name of environmentalism? I get my only news about US politics from HN, so I genuinely have no idea.
- bsder 9y ago
  > Are you aware of how the only people in the US to ever be successfully censored from the public internet for political (as opposed to legal) reasons are far-right websites? It wasn't the GOVERNMENT that did this. That's the only thing that freedom of speech laws give you freedom from. And, those sites weren't suppressed because they impacted politics; they were suppressed because they impacted profitability. It's almost like the right needs some sort of "neutrality" laws that guarantee that internet websites and internet traffic they need can't be restricted. I'm pretty far left in my politics, and I find the idea that these websites got kicked off quite worrying. However, I also find the centralization of internet services quite worrying. I'm still old school enough that I run my own servers for exactly this reason.
  - wyager 9y ago
    I agree. I did not claim this is the government's doing. I agree censorship of political content on private infrastructure is (and should be) legal; I also believe it's plainly immoral and should alarm people. I also believe that, given that the public DNS is government-controlled, it nominally belongs to the public and private entities like cloudflare should not be gatekeepers to it. Of course, the best solution is for everyone to switch to some sort of crypto-based truly public DNS system like Namecoin, but that's not happening for a while.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Communists don't advocate genocide as a matter of dogma.
Myrmornis 9y ago
There is nowadays a great deal of censorship from the left in America. For example, shutting down of talks like https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/richard-dawkins-deplatformed-at-a-book-talk-berkeley-for-abusive-speech-about-islam-on-twitter/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/richard-...
- losteric 9y ago
  And there is plenty of opposition from "the left" itself against that kind of censorship
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Whereas there's no opposition from "the right" against the Nazis for examples?
    - losteric 9y ago
      Obviously most of the right is against Nazis, but the modern conservative faction seems to draw a much higher ratio of violence and fascist rhetoric than the left. When something happens, the media gives right-wing fascists the benefit of the doubt; "we don't know who he is", "he doesn't represent the movement", "he was scared", "he was attacked", "he's crazy", and once the proof is out they tend to draw false equivalencies with left. That doesn't happen as much on the left - it's stigmatized full stop, no excuses. CNN's clickbait news will drag it out
      - coldtea 9y ago
        >When something happens, the media gives right-wing fascists the benefit of the doubt; "we don't know who he is", "he doesn't represent the movement", "he was scared", "he was attacked", "he's crazy", and once the proof is out they tend to draw false equivalencies with left. Does it though? Because I found the majority of the media except niche-oriented ones like FOX and Breibart do not fit that profile.

larvaetron 9y ago

I wouldn't classify "think of the children" as a right-wingers' club - Tipper Gore co-founded the PMRC.

ktRolster 9y ago
It works because people actually do care about kids. The hard part is figuring out what will help them.
coldtea 9y ago
I wouldn't classify Tipper Gore as left wing either. Whether Democrats are they are hardly left wing, and somebody who would found PMRC even less so...